Joseph Schumpeter 資本主義能生存嗎？
https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/4/1470/files/2010/08/schumpeter.pdf
約瑟夫·熊彼特 （1883-1950）
約瑟夫·熊彼特是一位涉獵廣泛的經濟學家，他廣泛地撰寫了有關經濟體係的文章。他出生於捷克斯洛伐克，但一生大部分時間在美國度過。
除了 1919-20 年擔任奧地利財政部長期間，他還是經濟學教授，在包括哈佛大學在內的多所大學任教，從 1932 年起直至去世。
作為一名興趣廣泛（不僅限於經濟學）的學者，他曾說自己在以下三個類別中的兩個方麵是他那個時代最優秀的：騎士、經濟學家、情人。在這三個類別中的哪兩個方麵他最優秀？他總是把這個決定留給他的讀者。
他的《資本主義、社會主義和民主》於 1942 年首次出版，是最受歡迎的經濟學書籍之一。在本選集中，他認為資本主義憑借其自身的成功將破壞其活力——企業家精神——真正的“社會主義的領跑者不是那些宣揚社會主義的知識分子或鼓動者，而是範德比爾特、卡內基和洛克菲勒家族[巨型工業家]”。
約瑟夫·熊彼特。1942 年（第 3 版：1950 年）。資本主義、社會主義與民主。紐約：Harper Torchbooks，Harper and Row Publishers，第 132-34、141-42、150-51、417-18 頁。
資本主義能生存嗎？
我們已經看到，企業家的職能是利用一項發明，或者更廣泛地說，利用一項未經嚐試的技術可能性，以新的方式生產新商品或生產舊商品，開辟新的材料供應源或新的產品銷售渠道，重組行業等，改革或革新生產模式。早期的鐵路建設、第一次世界大戰前的電力生產、蒸汽和鋼鐵、汽車、殖民企業，這些都提供了一個大類的壯觀例子，其中包括無數低級的例子——甚至是成功生產某種香腸或牙刷。這種活動主要是造成反複出現的“繁榮”的原因，這種繁榮會徹底改變經濟有機體，而反複出現的“衰退”則是由於新產品或方法的不平衡影響造成的。承擔這些新事物很困難，而且構成了獨特的經濟功能。
首先，因為它們超出了每個人都理解的常規任務，其次，因為環境以多種方式抵製，根據社會條件的不同，從簡單地拒絕資助或購買新事物，到對試圖生產它的人進行人身攻擊。要自信地超越熟悉的燈塔範圍采取行動並克服這種阻力，需要隻有一小部分人口才具備的能力，這些能力定義了企業家類型和企業家功能。這項功能本質上並不在於發明任何東西或以其他方式創造企業利用的條件。它在於把事情做好。這項社會功能已經失去重要性，而且即使以企業家精神為主要推動力的經濟過程本身繼續進行，未來也必將以更快的速度失去它。因為，一方麵，現在做超出常規的事情比過去容易得多——創新本身也正在淪為常規。
技術進步越來越成為訓練有素的專家團隊的業務，他們生產出所需的產品，並使其以可預測的方式發揮作用。早期商業冒險的浪漫正在迅速消退，因為現在有太多東西可以嚴格計算，而過去這些東西隻能在天才的靈光一閃中才能想象出來。
另一方麵，在已經習慣了經濟變化的環境中，個性和意誌力的作用就小了——最好的例子是源源不斷的新的消費者和生產者商品——人們不是抵製，而是理所當然地接受它。
隻要資本主義秩序繼續存在，來自生產過程創新威脅的利益集團的抵製就不太可能消失。例如，大規模生產廉價住房的道路上最大的障礙是徹底的機械化和全麵消除低效的工作方法。但所有其他類型的阻力——尤其是消費者和生產者對新事物的阻力——幾乎已經消失了。因此，經濟進步趨於非人格化和自動化。官僚和委員會的工作傾向於取代個人行動。……[參考]軍事類比將有助於闡明要點。在過去，大約到拿破侖戰爭[1803-1815]為止，將領意味著領導，成功意味著指揮官的個人成功，他以如此多的金錢獲得相應的“利潤”。
社會威望。戰爭技術和軍隊結構就是這樣，領導者的個人決策和驅動力——甚至他騎在一匹華麗的馬上——都是戰略和戰術局勢中必不可少的因素。拿破侖的存在曾經是，也必須被真正地感受到，在他的戰場上。現在情況已經不同了。合理化和專業化的辦公室工作最終會抹殺個性、可計算的結果和“遠見”。領導者不再有機會投身戰鬥。他正在變成另一個辦公室職員——而且是一個並不總是很難取代的人。或者再舉一個軍事類比。
中世紀的戰爭是非常私人的事情。裝甲騎士練習一種需要終身訓練的藝術，他們每個人都憑借個人技能和實力而獨樹一幟。很容易理解為什麽這種技藝應該成為社會階層的基礎，這個詞的意義最為充分和豐富。但社會和技術變革削弱並最終摧毀了該階級的功能和地位。戰爭本身並沒有因此而停止。它隻是變得越來越機械化——最終變得如此之多，以至於在如今僅僅是一項職業的成功不再具有個人成就的內涵，而這種成就不僅會提升個人，還會提升他的群體，使其獲得持久的社會領導地位。
現在，類似的社會過程——歸根結底是相同的社會過程——削弱了資本主義企業家的作用，以及他的社會地位。他的角色，雖然不如中世紀大大小小的軍閥那麽光鮮，但也隻是另一種形式的個人領導，憑借個人力量和個人對成功的責任而行動。
他的地位，就像武士階級的地位一樣，一旦這一社會功能在社會過程中失去重要性，就會受到威脅，無論是由於它所服務的社會需求的停止，還是由於這些需求由其他更不人性化的方法滿足，他的地位都會受到威脅。但這影響了整個資產階級階層的地位。盡管企業家從一開始就不一定或通常不是該階層的成員，但他們在成功的情況下仍然會進入該階層。
因此，盡管企業家本身不構成一個社會階層，但資產階級吸收了他們及其家庭和關係，從而在當前招募和振興自己，同時，那些與“商業”斷絕積極關係的家庭在一代或兩代之後退出了該階層。在這兩者之間，有我們所說的工業家、商人、金融家和銀行家的大部分；他們處於創業和僅僅管理繼承領域的中間階段。該階級賴以生存的回報，以及該階級的社會地位，都取決於這一或多或少活躍的階層的成功——當然，正如在這個國家的情況一樣，這一階層可能占資產階級階層的 90% 以上——以及那些正在上升到該階級的個人的成功。因此，從經濟和社會學的角度來看，資產階級直接和間接地依賴於企業家，作為一個階級，它與企業家共存亡，盡管很可能會出現一個或多或少延長的過渡階段——最終，在這個階段，資產階級可能會感到既不能死也不能活，就像封建文明的情況一樣。
引言
總結一下我們論點的這一部分：如果資本主義的發展——“進步”——要麽停止，要麽完全自動化，那麽工業資產階級的經濟基礎最終將減少到當前行政工作所支付的工資，除了可能持續一段時間的準租金和壟斷收益的殘餘。由於資本主義企業憑借其成就，傾向於使進步自動化，我們得出結論，它傾向於使自己變得多餘——在自身成功的壓力下分崩離析。完全官僚化的巨型工業單位不僅驅逐了中小型企業並“剝奪”了其所有者，而且最終還驅逐了企業家並剝奪了資產階級，而資產階級在這個過程中不僅會失去收入，而且會失去更重要的功能。社會主義的真正先驅不是那些宣揚社會主義的知識分子或鼓動者，而是範德比爾特家族、卡內基家族和洛克菲勒家族。
這一結果可能並不完全符合馬克思主義社會主義者的口味，更不符合更通俗（馬克思會說是庸俗）社會主義者的口味。但就預測而言，它與他們的預測並無不同。
因此，資本主義進程將所有這些製度推到了次要地位，特別是財產製度和自由契約製度，這些製度表達了資本主義的需求。
以及真正“私人”經濟活動的方式。如果資本主義沒有廢除這些方式，因為它已經廢除了勞動力市場的自由承包，那麽它就通過改變現有法律形式的相對重要性（例如，與合夥企業或個人企業有關的法律形式）或改變其內容或含義來達到同樣的目的。資本主義過程通過用一小塊股份取代工廠的牆壁和機器，使財產的概念失去了生命力。它放鬆了曾經如此強大的控製力——這種控製力是指合法權利和對自己財產的實際能力；這種控製力也是指所有權持有者失去了在經濟、身體和政治上為“他的”工廠及其控製權而鬥爭的意願，必要時甚至會死在工廠的台階上。我們可以稱之為財產的物質實質（即其可見和可觸摸的現實）的消失不僅影響了持有者的態度，也影響了工人和公眾的態度。非物質化、非功能化和缺席的所有權不會像財產的重要形式那樣給人留下深刻印象並喚起道德忠誠。最終，將沒有人真正關心維護它——無論是在大型企業 [公司] 內部還是外部。
我已經在其他地方解釋了相信資本主義秩序傾向於自我毀滅和中央集權社會主義是……可能的繼承者的原因。簡要而膚淺地講，這些原因可以歸納為四個方麵。首先，商業階層在發展這個國家的生產力方麵所取得的成功，以及這一成功為所有階層創造了新的生活標準這一事實，卻自相矛盾地削弱了同一商業階層的社會和政治地位，盡管其經濟職能並未過時，但趨於過時並易於官僚化。其次，資本主義活動本質上是“理性的”，它傾向於傳播理性的思維習慣，並破壞那些忠誠和上級與下級的習慣，而這些對於生產工廠製度化領導的有效運作卻是必不可少的：任何社會製度都不可能完全建立在（法律上）平等的締約方之間的自由合同網絡之上，在這個網絡中，每個人都應該隻受自己（短期）功利目的的指導。第三，商業階層專注於工廠和辦公室的工作，這有助於建立一個政治體係和一個知識階層，其結構和利益發展出一種獨立於大型企業利益的態度，並最終對大型企業的利益產生敵意。後者越來越無法保護自己免受短期內對其他階層有利可圖的襲擊。第四，由於這一切，資本主義社會的價值觀體係雖然與其經濟成功有因果關係，但不僅在公眾心目中，而且在“資本家”階層本身中也失去了影響力。雖然我還有很多時間，但需要一點時間來說明如何從這些方麵解釋現代對安全、平等和監管（經濟工程）的追求。
經濟學經典讀物
要弄清資本主義社會的解體過程已經到了何種程度，最好的辦法就是觀察其影響在多大程度上被商業階層本身和大量經濟學家視為理所當然，這些經濟學家認為自己反對（百分之百的）社會主義，並且習慣於否認任何社會主義傾向的存在。僅就後者而言，他們不僅毫無疑問地而且讚同地接受：（1）各種旨在防止經濟衰退或至少是蕭條的穩定政策，即大量的公共商業管理，即使不是充分就業的原則；（2）“收入更加平等的願望”，很少定義他們願意在多大程度上實現絕對平等，以及與此相關的再分配稅收原則； (3) 價格方麵，各種監管措施種類繁多，經常以反壟斷口號為借口；(4) 勞動力和貨幣市場的公共控製，盡管範圍很廣；(5) 無限擴大現在或最終將由公共企業滿足的需求範圍，無論是免費的還是基於某種郵政原則；(6) 當然還有各種安全立法。我相信，瑞士有一座山，經濟學家們在那裏召開了大會，表達了對所有或大多數這些事情的反對。但這些詛咒甚至沒有引起攻擊。
About Joseph Schumpeter
https://bpb-us-e2.wpmucdn.com/sites.middlebury.edu/dist/4/1470/files/2010/08/schumpeter.pdf?
Joseph Schumpeter (1883-1950) was a wide-ranging economist who wrote with a broad brush about economic systems. He was born in Czechoslovakia but spent much of his life in the United States. Except for the period 1919-20 when he was Austria’s minister of finance, he was a professor of economics, teaching at various universities, including Harvard from 1932 until the end of his life. A scholar whose interests encompassed many fields, not just economics, he once said that he was the best of his time in two of the following three categories: horseman, economist, lover. In which two of the three was he the best? He always left this decision to his audience. His Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, first published in 1942, is one of the most popular economics books. In this selection he argues that capitalism, by its own success, will undermine its dynamic—entrepreneurship—and that the true “pacemakers of socialism were not the intellectuals or agitators who preached it but the [giant industrialists] Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers.” Joseph Schumpeter. 1942 (3rd edition: 1950). Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. New York: Harper Torchbooks, Harper and Row Publishers, pp. 132-34, 141-42, 150-51, 417-18.
Can Capitalism Survive?
We have seen that the function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by exploiting an invention or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for producing a new commodity or producing an old one in a new way, by opening up a new source of supply of materials or a new outlet for products, by reorganizing an industry and so on. Railroad construction in its earlier stages, electrical power production before the First World War, steam and steel, the motorcar, colonial ventures afford spectacular instances of a large genus which comprises innumerable humbler ones —down to such things as making a success of a particular kind of sausage or toothbrush. This kind of activity is primarily responsible for the recurrent “prosperities” that revolutionize the economic organism and the recurrent “recessions” that are due to the disequilibrating impact of the new products or methods. To undertake such new things is difficult and constitutes a distinct economic function, first, because they lie outside of the routine tasks which everybody understands and, secondly, because the environment resists in many ways that vary, according to social conditions, from simple refusal either to finance or to buy a new thing, to physical attack on the man who tries to produce it. To act with confidence beyond the range of familiar beacons and to overcome that resistance requires aptitudes that are present in only a small fraction of the population and that define the entrepreneurial type as well as the entrepreneurial function. This function does not essentially consist in either inventing anything or otherwise creating the conditions which the enterprise exploits. It consists in getting things done.
This social function is already losing importance and is bound to lose it at an accelerating rate in the future even if the economic process itself of which entrepreneurship was the prime mover went on unabated. For, on the one hand, it is much easier now than it has been in the past to do things that lie outside familiar routine—innovation itself is being reduced to routine. Technological progress is increasingly becoming the business of teams of trained specialists who turn out what is required and make it work in predictable ways. The romance of earlier commercial adventure is rapidly wearing away, because so many more things can be strictly calculated that had of old to be visualized in a flash of genius.
On the other hand, personality and will power must count for less in environments which have become accustomed to economic change—best instanced by an incessant stream of new 28 CLASSIC READINGS IN ECONOMICS consumers’ and producers’ goods—and which, instead of resisting, accept it as a matter of course. The resistance which comes from interests threatened by an innovation in the productive process is not likely to die out as long as the capitalist order persists. It is, for instance, the great obstacle on the road toward mass production of cheap housing which presupposes radical mechanization and wholesale elimination of inefficient methods of work on the plot. But every other kind of resistance—the resistance, in particular, of consumers and producers to a new kind of thing because it is new—has well-nigh vanished already.
Thus, economic progress tends to become depersonalized and automatized. Bureau and committee work tends to replace individual action. . . . [R]eference to the military analogy will help to bring out the essential point.
Of old, roughly up to and including the Napoleonic Wars [1803-1815], generalship meant leadership and success meant the personal success of the man in command who earned corresponding “profits” in terms of social prestige. The technique of warfare and the structure of armies being what they were, the individual decision and driving power of the leading man— even his actual presence on a showy horse—were essential elements in the strategical and tactical situations. Napoleon’s presence was, and had to be, actually felt on his battlefields. This is no longer so. Rationalized and specialized office work will eventually blot out personality, the calculable result, the “vision.” The leading man no longer has the opportunity to fling himself into the fray. He is becoming just another office worker—and one who is not always difficult to replace.
Or take another military analogy. Warfare in the Middle Ages was a very personal affair. The armored knights practiced an art that required lifelong training and every one of them counted individually by virtue of personal skill and prowess. It is easy to understand why this craft should have become the basis of a social class in the fullest and richest sense of that term. But social and technological change undermined and eventually destroyed both the function and the position of that class. Warfare itself did not cease on that account. It simply became more and more mechanized—eventually so much so that success in what now is a mere profession no longer carries that connotation of individual achievement which would raise not only the man but also his group into a durable position of social leadership.
Now a similar social process—in the last analysis the same social process—undermines the role and, along with the role, the social position of the capitalist entrepreneur. His role, though less glamorous than that of medieval warlords, great or small, also is or was just another form of individual leadership acting by virtue of personal force and personal responsibility for success. His position, like that of warrior classes, is threatened as soon as this function in the social process loses its importance, and no less if this is due to the cessation of the social needs it served than if those needs are being served by other, more impersonal, methods.
But this affects the position of the entire bourgeois stratum. Although entrepreneurs are not necessarily or even typically elements of that stratum from the outset, they nevertheless enter it in case of success. Thus, though entrepreneurs do not per se form a social class, the bourgeois class absorbs them and their families and connections, thereby recruiting and revitalizing itself currently while at the same time the families that sever their active relation to “business” drop out of it after a generation or two. Between, there is the bulk of what we refer to as industrialists, merchants, financiers and bankers; they are in the intermediate stage between entrepreneurial venture and mere current administration of an inherited domain. The returns on which the class lives are produced by, and the social position of the class rests on, the success of this more or less active sector—which of course may, as it does in this country, form over 90 per cent of the bourgeois stratum—and of the individuals who are in the act of rising into that class. Economically and sociologically, directly and indirectly, the bourgeoisie therefore depends on the entrepreneur and, as a class, lives and will die with him, though a more or less prolonged transitional stage—eventually a stage in which it may feel equally unable to die and to live—is quite likely to occur, as in fact it did occur in the case of the feudal civilization.
INTRODUCTION
To sum up this part of our argument: if capitalist evolution—“progress”—either ceases or becomes completely automatic, the economic basis of the industrial bourgeoisie will be reduced eventually to wages such as are paid for current administrative work excepting remnants of quasi-rents and monopoloid gains that may be expected to linger on for some time. Since capitalist enterprise, by its very achievements, tends to automatize progress, we conclude that it tends to make itself superfluous—to break to pieces under the pressure of its own success. The perfectly bureaucratized giant industrial unit not only ousts the small or medium-sized firm and “expropriates” its owners, but in the end it also ousts the entrepreneur and expropriates the bourgeoisie as a class which in the process stands to lose not only its income but also what is infinitely more important, its function. The true pacemakers of socialism were not the intellectuals or agitators who preached it but the Vanderbilts, Carnegies and Rockefellers. This result may not in every respect be to the taste of Marxian socialists, still less to the taste of socialists of a more popular (Marx would have said, vulgar) description. But so far as prognosis goes, it does not differ from theirs. . . Thus the capitalist process pushes into the background all those institutions, the institutions of property and free contracting in particular, that expressed the needs and ways of the truly “private” economic activity. Where it does not abolish them, as it already has abolished free contracting in the labor market, it attains the same end by shifting the relative importance of existing legal forms—the legal forms pertaining to corporate business for instance as against those pertaining to the partnership or individual firm—or by changing their contents or meanings. The capitalist process, by substituting a mere parcel of shares for the walls of, and the machines in, a factory, takes the life out of the idea of property. It loosens the grip that once was so strong—the grip in the sense of the legal right and the actual ability to do as one pleases with one’s own; the grip also in the sense that the holder of the title loses the will to fight, economically, physically, politically, for “his” factory and his control over it, to die if necessary on its steps. And this evaporation of what we may term the material substance of property—its visible and touchable reality—affects not only the attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and of the public in general. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownership does not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form of property did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares to stand for it—nobody within and nobody without the precincts of the big concerns [companies].
Thus the capitalist process pushes into the background all those institutions, the institutions of property and free contracting in particular, that expressed the needs and ways of the truly “private” economic activity. Where it does not abolish them, as it already has abolished free contracting in the labor market, it attains the same end by shifting the relative importance of existing legal forms—the legal forms pertaining to corporate business for instance as against those pertaining to the partnership or individual firm—or by changing their contents or meanings. The capitalist process, by substituting a mere parcel of shares for the walls of, and the machines in, a factory, takes the life out of the idea of property. It loosens the grip that once was so strong—the grip in the sense of the legal right and the actual ability to do as one pleases with one’s own; the grip also in the sense that the holder of the title loses the will to fight, economically, physically, politically, for “his” factory and his control over it, to die if necessary on its steps. And this evaporation of what we may term the material substance of property—its visible and touchable reality—affects not only the attitude of holders but also that of the workmen and of the public in general. Dematerialized, defunctionalized and absentee ownership does not impress and call forth moral allegiance as the vital form of property did. Eventually there will be nobody left who really cares to stand for it—nobody within and nobody without the precincts of the big concerns [companies].
The reasons for believing that the capitalist order tends to destroy itself and that centralist socialism is . . . a likely heir apparent I have explained elsewhere. Briefly and superficially, these reasons may be summed up under four heads. First, the very success of the business class in developing the productive powers of this country and the very fact that this success has created a new standard of life for all classes has paradoxically undermined the social and political position of the same business class whose economic function, though not obsolete, tends to become obsolescent and amenable to bureaucratization. Second, capitalist activity, being essentially “rational,” tends to spread rational habits of mind and to destroy those loyalties and those habits of super- and subordination that are nevertheless essential for the efficient working of the institutionalized leadership of the producing plant: no social system can work which is based exclusively upon a network of free contracts between (legally) equal contracting parties and in which everyone is supposed to be guided by nothing except his own (short-run) utilitarian ends. Third, the concentration of the business class on the tasks of the factory and the office was instrumental in creating a political system and an intellectual class, the structure and interests of which developed an attitude of independence from, and eventually of hostility to, the interests of large-scale business. The latter is becoming increasingly incapable of defending itself against raids that are, in the short run, highly profitable to other classes. Fourth, in consequence of all this, the scheme of values of capitalist society, though causally related to its economic success, is losing its hold not only upon the public mind but also upon the “capitalist” stratum itself. Little time, though more than I have, would be needed to show how modern drives for security, equality, and regulation (economic engineering) may be explained on these lines. 30
CLASSIC READINGS IN ECONOMICS
The best method of satisfying ourselves as to how far this process of disintegration of capitalist society has gone is to observe the extent to which its implications are being taken for granted both by the business class itself and by the large number of economists who feel themselves to be opposed to (one hundred per cent) socialism and are in the habit of denying the existence of any tendency toward it. To speak of the latter only, they accept not only unquestioningly but also approvingly: (1) the various stabilization policies which are to prevent recessions or at least depressions, that is, a large amount of public management of business situations even if not the principle of full employment; (2) the “desirability of greater equality of incomes,” rarely defining how far short of absolute equality they are prepared to go, and in connection with this the principle of redistributive taxation; (3) a rich assortment of regulative measures, frequently rationalized by antitrust slogans, as regards prices; (4) public control, though within a wide range of variation, over the labor and the money market; (5) indefinite extension of the sphere of wants that are, now or eventually, to be satisfied by public enterprise, either gratis or on some post-office principle; and (6) of course all types of security legislation. I believe that there is a mountain in Switzerland on which congresses of economists have been held which express disapproval of all or most of these things. But these anathemata have not even provoked attack.
資本主義能生存嗎？熊彼特回答 80 年後
https://www.aier.org/article/can-capitalism-survive-80-years-after-schumpeters-answer/?gad_source=
Richard M. EbelingRichard M. Ebeling – 2022 年 5 月 1 日
Richard M. Ebeling 是 AIER 高級研究員，也是南卡羅來納州查爾斯頓西點軍校的 BB&T 傑出倫理學和自由企業領導力教授。
Ebeling 從 2008 年到 2009 年住在 AIER 的校園裏。
轉載自未來自由基金會
八十年前，在第二次世界大戰期間，奧地利出生的經濟學家 Joseph A. Schumpeter 出版了他最著名的著作之一《資本主義、社會主義和民主》（1942 年）。他提出並試圖回答的一個核心問題是“資本主義能生存嗎？”他的基本結論是“不，我認為它不能”（第 61 頁）。他（絕望地）相信可行的社會主義將取代市場社會。現在，在他得出這個結論 80 年後，我們能對資本主義的未來說些什麽，或者，也許更確切地說，自由市場、自由經濟體係的未來說些什麽？
約瑟夫·阿洛伊斯·熊彼特於 1883 年 2 月 8 日出生在舊奧匈帝國，該地區現在是捷克共和國的一部分。第一次世界大戰前幾年，他就讀於維也納大學，是另一位著名的奧地利經濟學家路德維希·馮·米塞斯的同學，也是奧地利經濟學派早期領導人之一歐根·馮·龐巴維克的研究生研討會同學。1919 年，他曾短暫擔任戰後新奧地利共和國政府的財政部長。 1925 年，他開始在德國波恩大學任職，1932 年轉入哈佛大學任教，直到 1950 年 1 月 8 日去世，享年 66 歲。
企業家創新和創造性破壞過程
熊彼特在 28 歲時出版了《經濟發展理論》（1911 年），一舉成名。他將“企業家”定義為市場過程的核心和動態人物，他們引入變革性創新，從根本上改變經濟活動的形式和方向。企業家通過向市場推出新的或顯著改進的產品，或通過更好、更便宜的製造方式，或通過打開以前無法獲得的資源或成品市場來實現這一點。企業家是積極經濟變革的“破壞者”。
在《資本主義、社會主義和民主》一書中，熊彼特重申了這一論點，將企業家稱為創造性破壞過程的發起者：
這一創造性破壞過程是資本主義的基本事實……啟動和保持資本主義引擎運轉的基本動力來自資本主義企業創造的新消費品、新的生產或運輸方式、新市場、新的工業組織形式……因此，資本主義本質上是一種經濟變革的形式或方法，它不僅永遠不會靜止，而且也永遠不會靜止（第 82-83 頁）。
他還指出，經濟學教科書中的標準“完全競爭”和“壟斷”模型不僅不合適，而且對於理解、評估和判斷市場經濟的運作和意義來說基本上毫無用處。這些模型假設了一個沒有時間或空間、知識和期望沒有變化的世界。它們是“靜態的”和人為的“機械的”，因為它們沒有為代表“現實世界”資本主義運作的創新型企業變革留下任何空間。
動態、競爭的市場經濟不應根據時間的凍結時刻來判斷，而應視為一個跨越時間的創造性和創新過程，隻有經過多年甚至幾十年的觀察才能最好地理解其全部背景。熊彼特宣稱，當采取這種更廣泛、更相關的視角時，幾乎所有對資本主義製度的負麵評價和批評都會不攻自破。
資本主義的經濟和文化成就
縱觀從十九世紀初到 1942 年出版其著作的近一個半世紀，熊彼特指出，商品和服務的產出急劇增加，包括 1790 年或 1810 年甚至最富有的國王和王子都買不到的新的和更好的商品。這種物質慷慨的湧現提高了更多人口的生活水平，主要受益者是現代西方社會中下層階級和現在日益壯大的中產階級，而且這一群體在世界各地也越來越多。
在此過程中，資本主義還發揮了巨大的“平衡器”作用，提高了所有人的經濟福祉，同時也縮小了“富人”和其他人的生活質量差距。幾年前少數人的奢侈品迅速成為理所當然的必需品
通過不斷改進的大規模生產，資本主義為所有人的日常生活提供了便利。
熊彼特說，“資本主義文化”還消除了政治特權和偏袒，並日益促進了所有人，包括婦女、宗教和少數民族在法律麵前的平等。資本主義用一種個人主義的倫理和政治取代了原始的部落和社會集體主義，這種倫理和政治建立了基於契約自由的個人權利、私有財產和人類交往的理想。
一年前，即 1941 年 3 月，熊彼特在馬薩諸塞州波士頓的洛厄爾研究所發表了一係列演講，在演講中，他簡明扼要地總結了競爭資本主義在 1870 年至 1914 年期間（他認為是其鼎盛時期）的政治和社會成功：
個人說、想和做自己喜歡的事情的自由也在非常廣泛的範圍內，這是普遍接受的。這種自由包括經濟行動的自由：私有財產和繼承、自由主動性和行為是該文明的基本要素。他們所稱的政府幹預，被認為隻有在狹小的範圍內才是合理的。國家必須為個人的生活提供最低限度的框架，而且必須以最低限度的支出來提供這一框架。廉價國家的理想自然地與這樣的假設相輔相成，即稅收應保持在一定的限度內，使商業和私人生活的發展方式與沒有稅收時大致相同……
商品的自由流動，即使有限製，也隻受關稅的限製；人員和資本的自由流動，原則上不容置疑；所有這些都由不受限製的黃金貨幣促成，並受到日益增多的國際法的保護，這些國際法原則上反對任何形式的武力或強迫，並支持和平解決國際衝突。
他補充說，因此，自由和競爭的資本主義社會理想是國際和平，反對戰爭和征服：“這種文明……不利於對國家榮耀、勝利等的崇拜……它計算了戰爭的代價，並不支持將榮耀視為一種資產。”
資本主義會自我毀滅嗎？
然而，盡管這個世界充滿了人類自由、個人權利、開放競爭機會、生活水平不斷提高和法律麵前人人平等的美好，熊彼特仍然堅信“資本主義”注定要滅亡。熊彼特經常喜歡悖論和諷刺。在這種情況下，他確信資本主義的成功創造了導致其滅亡的經濟力量和社會因素。
熊彼特對卡爾·馬克思著迷，並在《資本主義、社會主義和民主》的前 60 頁中分析了馬克思作為經濟學家、社會學家和未來預言家的貢獻。他認為馬克思在很多事情上，甚至大多數事情上都是錯誤的。但作為未來的預測者，熊彼特認為馬克思是正確的，但理由是錯誤的。資本主義將會消亡，並被某種形式的社會主義所取代，但這並不是因為“大眾”日??益貧困或財富過度集中在越來越少的人手中。
在他看來，通過資本主義創新和大規模生產的競爭引擎，大眾變得更加富裕，物質生活更加舒適。但是，大規模生產使大規模產出成為可能，這意味著企業家所有的企業正在被更加官僚管理的公司企業所取代，這破壞了個人創新企業家的精神、動力和存在。
這將破壞資本主義的個人主義文化。隨著政府對大眾社會所要求的“社會需求”承擔更多的責任和指導，不露麵的私營企業經理很容易轉變為國有企業的經理。白手起家的資產階級精神將在企業環境中消失，那些渴望並決心維護市場經濟私有財產秩序的人也將隨之消失。
知識分子的反資本主義
但在熊彼特看來，更重要的是現代知識分子階層的崛起，他們是思想的二手交易者，與資本主義製度脫節，與資本主義製度格格不入，而資本主義製度的生產力使得社會中相當一部分人能夠擺脫直接的商業和工作世界。大規模生產使得人們能夠通過書麵文字廣泛且相對廉價地分享和表達思想。這反過來又為那些專門傳播思想的人創造了一個賺錢的利基市場。熊彼特說：
我們發現知識分子處於完全前資本主義的條件下……但他們人數很少；他們是神職人員，大多是僧侶，他們的
隻有極小一部分人口能夠接觸到書麵表演……但是，如果說修道院是中世紀知識分子的誕生地，那麽資本主義則讓他們自由地發展，並為他們提供了印刷機……
上過大學的人很容易在心理上無法從事體力勞動，而不一定能在專業工作中獲得就業能力……他們構成了嚴格意義上的知識分子大軍，而且人數的增長速度不成比例。他們帶著一種徹底不滿的心態進入這個大軍。不滿滋生怨恨。
它常常將自己合理化為社會批評……這是知識分子觀眾對人、階級和機構的典型態度……知識分子群體的作用主要在於刺激、激發、表達和組織這些材料（反資本主義情緒和怨恨）。知識分子群體不由自主地蠶食著……資本主義社會的基礎……因為它依靠批評而生存，其整個地位都依賴於尖銳的批評……隨著資本主義發展的每一個成就，這種敵意不但沒有減少，反而增加了……
知識分子很少進入職業政治，更不用說攻占了負責任的職位。但他們為政治局任職，撰寫黨的小冊子和演講稿，擔任秘書和顧問，為個別政客的報紙樹立名聲，雖然這不是全部，但很少有人能忽視。在做這些事情時，他們在某種程度上把自己的心態影響到幾乎所有正在做的事情上（第 151-154 頁）。
熊彼特的憤世嫉俗的悲觀主義——他認為這是冷靜、客觀的觀察——使他在《資本主義、社會主義和民主》中寫到了一個著名的段落，他在其中得出結論：“資本主義在法官麵前接受審判，法官手裏拿著死刑判決書。無論他們聽到什麽辯護，他們都會通過它；成功辯護可能產生的唯一結果就是起訴書的改變”（第 144 頁）。
資本主義的案例和公民的短期觀點
但是，相對自由、競爭的資本主義為廣大公民提供了物質改善和社會收益，這又如何呢？當然，作為市場經濟帶來的慷慨的受益者，普通公眾會看穿知識分子和其他不喜歡市場社會的人的負麵和批判性言論。
唉，不，熊彼特說。人們需要具備經濟學知識和認真考慮“長期”的視角才能充分認識到資本主義製度的好處，事實上，資本主義製度的優點，這一事實意味著資本主義的案例處於嚴重的劣勢。熊彼特說：
資本主義的案例……永遠不可能簡單。廣大民眾必須擁有超出他們能力的洞察力和分析能力。為什麽？幾乎所有關於資本主義的胡言亂語都是由一些自稱經濟學家的人所支持的。
但即使忽略這一點，理性地認識資本主義的經濟表現及其對未來的希望也需要窮人幾乎不可能實現的道德壯舉。隻有從長遠來看，這種表現才會脫穎而出；任何支持資本主義的論點都必須建立在長期考慮的基礎上……
為了認同資本主義製度，今天的失業者必須完全忘記他的個人命運，今天的政治家必須完全忘記他的個人野心…… 對於大眾來說，重要的是短期觀點。就像路易十五一樣，他們覺得我們死後，洪水泛濫…… 被視為理所當然的世俗改善，加上令人強烈不滿的個人不安全感，當然是滋生社會動蕩的最佳配方（第 144-145 頁）。
熊彼特的悲觀並不意味著失敗主義
自第一次世界大戰之前，熊彼特就對社會主義無論是政治還是經濟製度都沒有任何同情——恰恰相反。事實上，當他的朋友在 1919 年問他為什麽同意參加一個政府委員會，該委員會被任命來製定德國工業的“社會化”時，據報道熊彼特回答說：“如果有人決心自殺，那麽至少應該有一名醫生在場。”
此外，當他在 1946 年為《資本主義、社會主義與民主》第二版撰寫新的序言時，他指出，他並不是要給人留下資本主義滅亡和社會主義勝利的“失敗主義”印象。他說：
事實本身及其推論永遠不會是失敗主義或相反的，無論它是什麽。一艘船正在沉沒的報告不是失敗主義。隻有接受這份報告的精神才是失敗主義的。
失敗主義者。船員們可以坐下來喝酒。但也可以衝到加油站。如果船員們隻是否認報告，盡管報告得到了仔細證實，那麽他們就是逃避主義者……哪個正常人會僅僅因為他確信自己遲早都會死而拒絕保衛自己的生命呢？……坦率地陳述不祥的事實從未像今天這樣必要，因為我們似乎已經將逃避主義發展成了一種思想體係（第 xi 頁）。
在 1942 年出版《資本主義、社會主義和民主》之後的 80 年裏，有 50 年的時間，冷戰和蘇聯和共產主義中國等國家社會主義實踐的現實，使現有的蘇聯式社會主義能否戰勝美國式“資本主義”成為一個迫切的問題。雖然熊彼特也認為，一種帶有經濟計劃的“民主”社會主義是可以想象的，但他隱含的假設是，某種形式的中央集權和獨裁政治權力將伴隨著戰後的社會主義實踐。因此，對於任何不是社會主義者並通過熊彼特的眼光看待世界的人來說，未來都是暗淡的。
“未來”並不像熊彼特擔心的那樣暗淡
然而，隨著 1976 年毛主席去世後中國開始推行市場導向改革，以及 1991 年蘇聯解體，熊彼特的預測似乎已經擱置。社會主義中央計劃已被否定，幾乎每個人都清楚社會主義獨裁的危險。當蘇聯從世界政治版圖上消失時，“資本主義”在創造物質財富、提高生活水平、消除貧困以及產生驚人的企業創新方麵似乎充滿活力。
那麽，在《資本主義、社會主義和民主》問世 80 年後，我們還能對約瑟夫·熊彼特的預測說些什麽呢？熊彼特在書中說，如果社會主義能夠從 20 世紀 40 年代開始再抵抗半個世紀，它將繼續產生與過去一樣驚人的經濟改善。然而，他警告說，即使徹頭徹尾的社會主義沒有取代市場社會，資本主義製度也會被幹預主義監管和削弱激勵的稅收削弱和蠶食。
幸運的是，即使麵對監管和再分配的國家，市場經濟仍然擁有足夠的競爭開放性和盈利機會，因此在過去幾十年中持續繁榮已成為現實。即使是最近，麵對政府封鎖和停工作為應對冠狀病毒危機的政治和家長式反應，以及由於每年數萬億美元的赤字而不斷增加的政府債務，剩餘的市場競爭和開放程度和形式已經為社會中的許多人帶來了恢複和改善的經濟環境。但毫無疑問，足夠的監管和財政負擔仍然可能並且將會“殺死下金蛋的（市場）鵝”。
知識分子和對資本主義的新指控
那麽，“資本主義”能夠生存下來嗎？這讓我們想到了熊彼特故事中的另一個因素，即知識分子的作用和影響力——思想和輿論的塑造者和塑造者。不幸的是，社會主義和政治家長式思想並沒有隨著蘇聯社會主義的垮台而失敗。相反，美國和其他國家的“進步”知識分子隻是退回到學術殿堂和類似的地方，舔舐他們的意識形態傷口，重新表述他們對“資本主義”的控訴。
馬克思主義式“階級鬥爭”的公眾吸引力可能已經失去了優勢。但集體主義理論家已經重新包裝了他們的政治信息，指責“資本主義”通過全球變暖摧毀了地球，並創造和延續了“白人特權”和“壓迫所有有色人種”的“係統性種族主義”。
熊彼特曾擔心“資本主義文化”的衰落和毀滅。也就是說，既包括以市場為基礎的私有財產和自由交換製度，也包括資本主義“文明”無法生存的信念和態度。這種文化的基礎是個人選擇的個人主義和市場內外的機會自由，以及對平等和公正的法治的尊重和保護。這包括思想和言論自由以及對不同意見和價值觀的容忍。
這正是社會主義和“進步”知識分子幾十年來一直在“蠶食”的文化基礎。而最新的變種不僅繼續蠶食，而且公開、正麵地挑戰了美國建國的前提，堅持認為美國所表達的思想
《獨立宣言》中提出的都是虛假和謊言，僅僅是“掩飾”了他們所說的美國建立在固有的、不可避免的種族主義之上。
“覺醒文化”是一種明確而激進的新反革命，旨在摧毀美國社會仍然存在的古典自由主義和自由市場對“資本主義”的理解的殘餘。我們在高等教育機構、大眾媒體和越來越多的美國企業中都能看到這一點。後者是因為企業高管也和我們一樣成為意識形態和教育潮流和宣傳的受害者，或者試圖駕馭新的政治浪潮，通過盡量減少被身份政治戰士攻擊和譴責的理由來維持或增加利潤率。
麵對新的集體主義，不要“失敗主義”
那麽，該怎麽辦呢？我們需要認真對待熊彼特的宣言。如果資本主義“船”似乎因為最近的反資本主義攻擊而“沉沒”，那麽我們絕不能聽天由命，坐以待斃，無計可施。相反，正如熊彼特所說，我們應該意識到形勢，並“迅速行動”，為資本主義和以古典自由主義為基礎的自由社會提供支持。
在過去的 100 年裏，自由市場社會的思想和製度似乎注定要失敗，但每次集體主義力量都未能實現其全部目標。確實，他們已經重組並重新組織了對自由社會剩餘要素的下一次意識形態和政治攻擊。但他們未能取得全麵勝利，是因為幸存的市場自由主義思想一直存在著抵抗。
我們的任務是盡我們所能，重振人們對真正自由社會理想和實踐的理解，激發人們維護、恢複和擴展這一理想和實踐的願望。但需要越來越多的人認識到非宿命論意願的重要性，即“掌舵”，這樣資本主義大船不僅能繼續航行，還能在哲學和意識形態上得到比以往更牢固的重建。
Can Capitalism Survive? 80 Years After Schumpeter's Answer
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009.
Books by Richard M. Ebeling:
為了新自由主義
作者：Richard Ebeling（作者）2019 年 8 月 11 日
https://www.amazon.ca/New-Liberalism-Richard-Ebeling/dp/163069178X
在《新自由主義》中，Richard M. Ebeling 解釋說，自由主義者認為，解放社會所有人的思想將在供需市場中產生創造性創新。
隨著時間的推移，這些創新提高了所有人的生活質量和水平，而且比被限製在政府法規和控製範圍內時要好得多，政府法規和控製限製了人們如何最好地發揮他們的才能，以及在他們認為最有吸引力的條件下發揮他們的才能。
Richard M. Ebeling 是 AIER 高級研究員，也是南卡羅來納州查爾斯頓西點軍校的 BB&T 傑出倫理學和自由企業領導力教授。 2008 年至 2009 年，埃貝林住在 AIER 校園裏。
位於馬薩諸塞州大巴靈頓的美國經濟研究所成立於 1933 年，是美國第一個獨立健全經濟學的代言人。如今，它發表持續的研究成果，舉辦教育項目，出版書籍，讚助實習生和學者，是世界著名的巴斯夏學會和備受推崇的健全貨幣項目的所在地。美國經濟研究所是一家 501c3 公共慈善機構。
For a New Liberalism
by Richard Ebeling (Author) Aug. 11 2019
https://www.amazon.ca/New-Liberalism-Richard-Ebeling/dp/163069178X
In “A New Liberalism,” Richard M. Ebeling explains that the liberal believes that the freeing of all the minds of society will produce the creative innovations in the marketplace of supply and demand.
Over time, these innovations improve the qualities and standards of living of all, and far better than when confined within the restrictions of government regulations and controls over how best men should apply their talents and on the terms they consider most attractive, all things considered.
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina. Ebeling lived on AIER's campus from 2008 to 2009.
The American Institute for Economic Research in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, was founded in 1933 as the first independent voice for sound economics in the United States. Today it publishes ongoing research, hosts educational programs, publishes books, sponsors interns and scholars, and is home to the world-renowned Bastiat Society and the highly respected Sound Money Project. The American Institute for Economic Research is a 501c3 public charity.
Can Capitalism Survive? 80 Years After Schumpeter's Answer
Richard M. Ebeling, an AIER Senior Fellow, is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel, in Charleston, South Carolina.
Ebeling lived on AIER’s campus from 2008 to 2009.
Eighty years ago, in the midst of the Second World War, Austrian-born economist Joseph A. Schumpeter published one of his most famous books, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (1942). A central question that he asked and tried to answer was, “Can Capitalism Survive?” His basic conclusion was, “No, I do not think it can” (p. 61). He was (forlornly) confident that a workable socialism would replace the market-based society. Now, eight decades after he drew this conclusion, what can we say about the future of capitalism, or, perhaps, better phrased, the free-market, liberal economic system?
Joseph Alois Schumpeter was born on February 8, 1883, in the old Austro-Hungarian Empire, in an area that is now a part of the Czech Republic. He attended the University of Vienna in the years before the First World War and was a classmate of another famous Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, in the graduate seminar of one of the early leaders of the Austrian School of Economics, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. During 1919, he briefly served as minister of finance in the postwar government of the new Republic of Austria. He took up a position at the University of Bonn in Germany in 1925 and moved to Harvard University in 1932, where he taught until his death on January 8, 1950, at the age of 66.
Entrepreneurial innovation and the process of creative destruction
Schumpeter made a mark for himself when he was 28 years old with the publication of his book The Theory of Economic Development (1911). He defined “the entrepreneur” as the central and dynamic figure of the market process who introduces transformative innovations that radically change the forms and directions of economic activity. The entrepreneur does so by bringing to market new or significantly improved products, or by better and less expensive ways of undertaking manufacturing, or by opening previously unavailable markets for resources or finished goods. The entrepreneur is the “disrupter” for positive economic change.
In Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy, Schumpeter restated this argument, referring to the entrepreneur as the initiator of a process of creative destruction:
This process of Creative Destruction is the essential fact about capitalism…. The fundamental impulse that sets and keeps the capitalist engine in motion comes from the new consumers’ goods, the new methods of production or transportation, the new markets, the new forms of industrial organization that capitalist enterprise creates…. Capitalism, then, is by nature a form or method of economic change and not only never is but never can be stationary (pp. 82–83).
He also pointed out that the standard economics textbook models of “perfect competition” and “monopoly” were not only misplaced but essentially useless for understanding, evaluating, and judging the workings and significance of the market economy. These models assume a world without time or space and without changes in knowledge and expectations. They were “static” and artificially “mechanical” in that they did not leave any room for the types of innovative entrepreneurial changes that represent the working of “real-world” capitalism.
The dynamic, competitive market economy needed to be judged not by frozen moments in time but rather as a creative and innovative process through time, the full context of which can be best appreciated only when looked at over years and even decades. When this wider and more relevant perspective is taken, virtually all of the negative assessments and criticisms of the capitalist system fall to the ground, Schumpeter declared.
Economic and cultural achievements of capitalism
Looking over the nearly century and a half from the start of the nineteenth century to his own time in 1942 when his book appeared, Schumpeter pointed to the dramatic increase in the output of goods and services, including new and better goods that were not available to even the wealthiest of kings and princes in, say, 1790 or 1810. This outpouring of material largess had raised the standards of living of a much larger population, with the main beneficiaries being the lower and now growing middle classes of modern Western society and increasingly around the world.
In doing this, capitalism was also serving as a great “leveler” that was raising the economic well-being of all, while also narrowing the differences in the quality of life between “the rich” and the rest. The luxuries of the few a mere handful of years ago rapidly became the taken-for-granted essentials of everyday life for all through ever-improving mass production.
The “culture of capitalism,” Schumpeter said, also had eliminated political privileges and favoritism and had increasingly fostered equality before the law for all, including women and religious and ethnic minorities. Capitalism replaced primitive tribal and social collectivism with an ethic and a politics of individualism that established the ideal of individual rights, private property, and human association based on freedom of contract.
A year earlier, in March 1941, Schumpeter delivered a series of lectures at the Lowell Institute in Boston, Massachusetts, in which he concisely summarized the political and social successes of competitive capitalism during the period of what he considered its heyday, between 1870 and 1914:
The freedom of the individual to say, think, and do what he pleased was also within very wide limits, generally accepted. This freedom included freedom of economic action: private property and inheritance, free initiative and conduct were essential elements of that civilization. What they characteristically called government interference was held to be justified only within narrow limits. The state had to provide a minimum of framework for the lives of individuals and this framework it had to provide with a minimum of expenditure. The ideal of the cheap state had its natural complement in the postulate that taxation should be kept within such limits that business and private life should develop in much the same way as they would have done if there had been no taxation at all….
Free movement of commodities, restricted if at all only by custom tariffs; freedom, unquestioned in principle, of migration of people and of capital; all facilitated by unrestricted gold currencies and protected by a growing body of international law that on principle disapproved of force or compulsion of any kind and favored peaceful settlement of international conflicts.
He added that the liberal and competitive capitalist social ideal, therefore, was one of international peace and against war and conquest: “That civilization … was not favorable to cults of national glory, victory, and so on…. It counted the cost of war and did not back the glory as an asset.”
Will capitalism destroy itself?
And, yet, in spite of this wondrous world of expanding human freedom, individual rights, open competitive opportunity, rising standards of living, and growing equality before the law, Schumpeter was persuaded that “capitalism” was doomed. Schumpeter was often fond of paradoxes and ironies. In this instance, he was convinced that the very successes of capitalism had created the economic forces and social factors that would bring about its demise.
Schumpeter was fascinated by Karl Marx and devoted the first 60 pages of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy to an analysis of Marx as economist, sociologist, and prophesier of the future. He considered Marx to be wrong on many, if not most, things. But as a forecaster of the future, Schumpeter considered Marx to be right, but for the wrong reasons. Capitalism would pass away and be replaced by some type of socialism, but not due to growing immiseration of “the masses” or an exaggerated concentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands.
As he saw it, the mass of the population became wealthier and more materially comfortable through the competitive engine of capitalist innovation and large-scale production. But the mass production methods with which large-scale output was made possible meant that entrepreneurially owned business was being replaced by the more bureaucratically managed corporate enterprise that undermined the spirit and drive and existence of the individual innovative enterpriser.
This would undermine the individualist culture of capitalism. The faceless private corporate managers easily could be transformed into the managers of state enterprises as governments took more responsibility for and direction of the clamored-for “social needs” of mass society. The bourgeois spirit of self-made men would disappear in the corporate environment, and with it those who would desire and be determined to preserve the private property order of a market economy.
The anti-capitalism of the intellectuals
But more important, in Schumpeter’s view, was the rise of a modern intellectual class, the second-hand dealers in ideas who were disconnected from and alien to the capitalist system, the very productivity of which made it possible for a sizable segment of the society to be freed from the direct world of commerce and work. Mass production made it possible for the wide and relatively inexpensive sharing and expressing of ideas through the written word. This, in turn, created an income-earning niche for those who specialize in the dissemination of ideas. Said Schumpeter:
We find intellectuals in thoroughly pre-capitalist conditions…. But they were few in number; they were clergymen, mostly monks, and their written performance was accessible to only an infinitesimal part of the population…. But if the monastery gave birth to the intellectual of the medieval world, it was capitalism that let him loose and presented him with the printing press….
The man who has gone through college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work…. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment.
And it often rationalizes itself into the social criticism which … is the intellectual spectator’s typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions…. The role of the intellectual group consists primarily in stimulating, energizing, verbalizing, and organizing this material [of anti-capitalist sentiments and resentments]…. The intellectual group cannot help nibbling … at the foundations of capitalist society … because it lives on criticism and its whole position depends on criticism that stings … [and] this hostility increases, instead of diminishing, with every achievement of capitalist evolution….
Intellectuals rarely enter professional politics and still more rarely conquer responsible office. But they staff political bureaus, write party pamphlets and speeches, act as secretaries and advisers, make the individual politician’s newspaper reputation which, though it is not everything, few men can afford to neglect. In doing these things they to some extent impress their mentality on almost everything that is being done (pp. 151–154).
Schumpeter’s cynical pessimism — which he considered dispassionate, objective observation — led him to a famous passage in Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in which he concluded that, “Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only thing a successful defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment” (p. 144).
The case for capitalism and the short-run view of the citizenry
But what of the material betterment and social gains that a relatively free, competitive capitalism has provided to the wide and general citizenry? Surely, the general public, the beneficiaries of the largess made possible by the market economy, would see through the negative and critical rhetoric of the intellectuals and others who dislike a market society.
Alas, no, Schumpeter said. The very fact that a knowledge of economics and a perspective that takes the “longer-run” into serious consideration is needed for people to fully appreciate the benefits and, indeed, the goodness of the capitalist system, means that the case for capitalism is at a serious disadvantage. Said Schumpeter:
The case for capitalism … could never be made simple. People at large would have to be possessed of an insight and a power of analysis which is altogether beyond them. Why, practically every nonsense that has ever been said about capitalism has been championed by some professed economist.
But even if this is disregarded, rational recognition of the economic performance of capitalism and of the hopes it holds out for the future would require an almost impossible moral feat by the have-not. That performance stands out only if we take a long-run view; any pro-capitalist argument must rest on long-run consideration….
In order to identify himself with the capitalist system, the unemployed of today would have to completely forget his personal fate and the politician of today his personal ambition…. For the masses, it is the short-run view that counts. Like Louis XV, they feel après nous, le déluge [after us, the flood]…. Secular improvement that is taken for granted and coupled with individual insecurity that is acutely resented is of course the best recipe for breeding social unrest (pp. 144–145).
Schumpeter’s gloom did not mean defeatism
It had been well known since before the First World War that Schumpeter had no sympathies for socialism as either a political or economic system — very much to the contrary. Indeed, when friends of his had asked him in 1919 why he had agreed to participate with a government commission appointed to work out the “socialization” of German industry, Schumpeter was reported to have replied, “If someone is determined to commit suicide, then a physician at least should be present.”
Furthermore, when he wrote a new preface for a second edition of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in 1946, he pointed out that he did not mean to create an impression of “defeatism” concerning the demise of capitalism and a triumph of socialism. He said:
Facts in themselves and inferences from them can never be defeatist or the opposite whatever that might be. The report that a given ship is sinking is not defeatist. Only the spirit in which this report is received can be defeatist. The crew can sit down and drink. But it can also rush to the pumps. If the men merely deny the report though it be carefully substantiated, then they are escapists…. What normal man will refuse to defend his life merely because he is quite convinced that sooner or later he will have to die anyhow?… Frank presentation of ominous facts was never more necessary than it is today because we seem to have developed escapism into a system of thought (p. xi).
For 50 of the 80 years that have followed the publication of Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy in 1942, the Cold War and the realities of socialism-in-practice in such countries as the Soviet Union and Communist China made it a burning issue whether existing Soviet-style socialism might triumph over American-style “capitalism.” While Schumpeter also had argued that a form of “democratic” socialism with economic planning was conceivable, his implicit assumption was that some form of centralized and dictatorial political power would accompany postwar instances of socialism-in-practice. Thus, the future looked grim for anyone who was not a socialist and looked at the world through Schumpeterian eyes.
The “future” was not as dim as Schumpeter feared
However, with the market-oriented reforms that were being introduced in China in the years after Chairman Mao’s death in 1976 and with the disappearance of the Soviet Union in 1991, Schumpeter’s projections seemed to have been put to rest. Socialist central planning had been discredited, and the dangers from socialist dictatorship were plain to almost everyone. “Capitalism’s” vibrancy in creating material wealth, raising standards of living and ending poverty, and generating amazing entrepreneurial innovations seemed very much alive at the very time when the Soviet Union disappeared from the political map of the world.
So, what might we still say about Joseph Schumpeter’s projections, now, eight decades after Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy? Schumpeter said in the book that if socialism could be fended off for another half-century from the 1940s, it would continue to produce the same wondrous economic betterment that it had created in the past. He warned however, that even if out-and-out socialism did not replace the market society, the capitalist system would be weakened and eaten away at by interventionist regulation and incentive-weakening taxation.
Fortunately, even in the face of the regulatory and redistributive state, the market economy has still possessed enough competitive openness and profit-earning opportunity that continuing prosperity has been a reality during these decades. Even most recently, in the face of government lockdowns and shutdowns as the political, paternalistic response to the coronavirus crisis, and a growing mountain of government debt due to trillions-of-dollars of annual deficits, the remaining degrees and forms of market competition and openness have resulted in restored and improving economic circumstances for many in the society. But enough regulatory and fiscal burdens can and will, no doubt, still “kill the (market) goose that lays the golden eggs.”
The intellectuals and the new indictment of capitalism
So, can and will “capitalism” survive? This gets us to the other factor in Schumpeter’s story, that being the role and influence of the intellectuals — the molders and shapers of ideas and public opinion. The socialist and political paternalist ideas, unfortunately, were not defeated with the fall of Soviet socialism. Instead, the “progressive” intellectuals in the United States and other countries merely retreated back to the halls of academia and similar places to lick their ideological wounds and reformulate their indictment of “capitalism.”
The public appeal of Marxist-style “class warfare” may have lost its edge. But the collectivist ideologues have rebranded their political message by accusing “capitalism” of destroying the planet through global warming and by creating and perpetuating a “systemic racism” of “white privilege” and “oppression of all people of color.”
Schumpeter had feared for the decay and destruction of the “culture of capitalism.” That is, both the market-based institutions of private property and free exchange, and the beliefs and attitudes without which capitalist “civilization,” as he put it, could not survive. The foundation of this culture was based on an individualism of personal choice and freedom of opportunity both inside and outside the marketplace, and a respect for and protection of an equal and impartial rule of law. This included freedom of thought and speech and tolerance for differences of opinion and values.
This is the very cultural foundation that socialist and “progressive” intellectuals have been “nibbling” away at for decades. And the latest variation not only continues the nibbling away but openly and frontally challenges the premises upon which the United States was founded by insisting that the ideas expressed in the Declaration of Independence are a sham and a lie, a mere “cover” for the inherent and inescapable racism on which the country, they say, has been built.
“Woke culture” is the explicit and aggressive new counter-revolution out to destroy the remnants of the classical-liberal and free-market understanding of “capitalism” that still exists in American society. We see it in the institutions of higher learning, in the mass media, and in a growing part of corporate America. The latter is due to corporate executives also being victims of the same ideological and educational currents and propaganda as the rest of us, or on the basis of trying to ride a new political wave to maintain or increase profit margins by minimizing reasons to be attacked and condemned by the identity politics warriors.
Do not be “defeatist” in the face of the new collectivisms
So, what is to be done? We need to take Schumpeter’s declaration seriously. If the capitalist “ship” seems to be “sinking” due to this latest anti-capitalist attack, we must not allow ourselves to be fatalistic and defeatist, sitting back and wringing our hands that there is nothing to be done. Instead, as Schumpeter said, we should appreciate the situation and “rush to the pumps” to shore up the case for capitalism and the classical liberal–based free society in general.
The last 100 years have seen more than one instance in which it seemed that the ideas and institutions of the free-market society were heading for inescapable defeat, but each time the collectivist forces have failed to achieve their full objectives. True enough, they have regrouped and reorganized their next ideological and political assault on the remaining elements of a free society. But their failure to gain full victory has been due to the resistance of the surviving ideas of market liberalism that have endured.
Our task is to do all in our power and ability to revive an understanding of and inspire a desire to preserve, restore, and extend the ideal and practice of the truly free society. But it will take a growing number of us to see the importance of the non-fatalistic willingness to “man the pumps” so the capitalist ship can not only stay afloat but also be philosophically and ideologically rebuilt even more firmly than it ever was before.
